1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to an apparatus and method for providing a select line decimated output signal and, more particularly, to an apparatus and method for selectively decimating the line output signal from an electronic image sensing device.
2. Description of the Prior Art
High resolution solid state image sensors such as charge-coupled devices (CCD), charge-injection detectors (CID), and so forth, are finding increasing use as imaging elements for cameras. Such high resolution image sensors produce a large number of pixels for each horizontal scan line of their output which may exceed 1,000 pixels.
In order for such high resolution solid state image sensors to be compatible with conventional TV video signal formats, each horizontal line scan of 1,000 or more pixels must be transferred in the time allowed for one conventional video line scan, 53.5 microseconds. However, in order to transfer electronic image signals for a 1,000 or more line scan, a bandwidth of over 10 MHz is required which far exceeds the capability of most conventional video recorders. Thus, at present in transferring the output of a high resolution sensor to a conventional video recorder, a high percentage of the image sensor output is typically lost as a result of the signal being constrained by the bandwidth limitations of the recording apparatus. As a consequence, a substantial amount of resolution is lost. One solution to solving the aforementioned problems is described in copending United States patent application Ser. No. 074,773, entitled "Apparatus for Encoding and Decoding High Resolution Still Images and Video Images for Recording on a Standard Storage Media", by A. Green and D. Pape, filed July 16, 1987. Green and Pape solve the aforementioned problem by dissecting each line of image data received from the image sensor into a plurality of interleaved subgroups, each subgroup of which may be transferred at a conventional video rate without loss of image resolution. Green and Pape, however, implement their line dissection with discrete circuitry separate and apart from the image sensor.